


Somewhere, One Day

by rilla



Category: History Boys - Bennett
Genre: M/M, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2006, recipient:slasheuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-27
Updated: 2009-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-05 07:54:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rilla/pseuds/rilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lockwood's funeral makes Dakin look at his life a little differently. 'There were destructive relationships and loves in this world far greater than the lamentable ballad of Irwin and Dakin.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somewhere, One Day

Stuart Dakin was not especially in the habit of keeping in touch with his old school friends.

 

It was all a matter of time; as in, he had very little of it. He had girlfriends - lots of girlfriends - and work, and friends from work. His old friends were from a world away. They were crude (Timms) and vaguely pathetic (Posner), and he had very little in common with them any more, excepting those few months that they'd all been caged in preparing for exams, with Hector and Irwin and Totty. It all seemed like a world away, more a bad dream than anything else. Or - maybe not a bad dream. It was really all more surreal than bad.

 

Still, he spoke to Scrippsy on a regular basis. He was sensible as ever, a sort of anchor that Dakin welcomed, who took the piss out of him for getting shagged on a regular basis, and who told him off for jetting to LA with his latest girlfriend at Christmas and forgetting all about his mum. They didn't see each other that often. They didn't have to. They just went to the pub and got sloshed sometimes, and talked about Oxford and school and what they were doing now, and Scripps - odd, he still didn't think of him as Don, how _schoolboy_ of him - would tell him some of the gossip about the old lot.

 

("-and so now he's a History teacher-")

 

("-apparently he has an allotment - hey, you bastard, don't laugh-")

 

("-he's got girls hanging off every arm-")

 

It wasn't that Dakin didn't care about them. Because an odd perverse part of him did, still. It was just that he didn't care very _much_. Then again, these days he didn't care about anything, really.

 

*

 

The grey haired man's eyebrows rose in a fashion that reminded Don Scripps uncomfortably of his old Headmaster. It was not a pleasant recollection, and he wondered, not for the first time, what had made him decide to work for this twat. "A _poetry_ corner?" Edwards asked, pointed disbelief dripping from every syllable. As if poetry was something to be scorned, as if someone who enjoyed poetry was instantly dismissible, when - what was it? What had he once said?

 

When it was the only education worth having. That was it. But maybe back then poetry itself had been a metaphor for something deeper and darker than Scripps had realised.

 

His left hand rose to ruffle uncomfortably through his hair. "Er, yeah. I think that it'd be a good idea to include a bit of literature. The world's tough enough. We might as well stick in something that's..."

 

Beautiful, was what he wanted to say, but his editor was not the type of man who stood for beauty.

 

"Creative," he settled for.

 

"Our media," Mr Edwards snarled, "is not for creativity. Our media, Don, is for _facts_."

 

"Yessir," Scripps agreed readily. "But to be fair, we _do_ have some cartoons. They're not just _facts_."

 

Mr Edwards' face told him that he was not winning. He decided that it was probably wise to make a hasty retreat.

 

So he reached forwards, and placed his proposal on Edwards' desk. "Well, there it is. If you reconsider," he explained.

 

As he left the office, he couldn't help but say over his shoulder, words beaten into him long ago by exercise books thwapped across the back of his head, "Facts aren't everything, you know."

 

When he sat back in his desk he couldn't help but smile slightly as he plucked his (slightly blunt) pencil from behind his ear, and began scribbling down names to himself on a piece of torn paper. _Auden. Sassoon_. Someone who wasn't queer. _Owen_. Then again, he'd been very close to Sassoon, suspiciously so. Scripps had his suspicions. _Larkin_. There. _McGough_. Crude and blunt and very Northern, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

 

He was just in the middle of writing down _Whitman_ when his phone rang.

 

*

 

"During the time of the Communists, Russia was transformed into one of the world's greatest superpowers. Lenin was arguably more humane than Stalin, but in recent years since the Soviet archives were opened, research has shown that-"

 

"He's such a nice boy," said Mrs Posner approvingly. "And he used to _teach_ you!"

 

David Posner rolled his eyes at the television. Blue eyes were gazing intently into the camera, oddly familiar and not at the same time as his old teacher gabbled words that Posner already knew about Russia. "He's a sell-out. That's not history," he snapped.

 

(He couldn't help but admire Irwin. He always had, even back then, even when he was casually and unintentionally breaking his heart.)

 

"He's a prat," Posner added, with perhaps more vitriol than he'd intended. "And" - this was the biggest insult of all - "a _journalist_."

 

"But his _eyes_," his mother said reverentially.

 

Posner stifled a sigh and settled down to watch TV.

 

*

 

Frances Lintott had always had a soft spot for Peter Rudge. Not because he was less academically inclined than the others, although that was undoubtedly the case, but because he was so refreshingly honest and clear-eyed. She recalled thinking that he was transparent. One could tell when he was lying. Not, of course, that he made a habit of fibbing, but at some point in their lives, all the boys she had ever taught had lied badly about the many and varied reasons that they were unable to produce any homework. Dakin had shamelessly made up complicated stories involving police cars and house fires. Rudge, of course, had looked shifty and pink and muttered something along the lines of, "Forgot it, miss."

 

Of course, he probably _had_ forgotten it. Dear boy.

 

So it was rather a surprise when her heart actually hurt for a moment upon reading the news of James Lockwood's death by friendly fire, another boy, one she had thought that she had no particular attachment to. Her throat suddenly swelled and her stomach lurched with something like grief.

 

That year had been exceptional. Bright and lively and talented, and Lockwood had been no different from the others. She remembered him as a true _boy_, loud and laughing and rambunctious, just as a boy should have been, without any of those unnatural _knowing_ glances that Dakin had bestowed upon everyone, and without those pathetically sad eyes that Posner had perpetually bestowed upon anyone who dared to look at him. She wondered for a moment whether Lockwood had had enough time to grow up, and then could not decide whether growing up was a good or bad thing.

 

*

 

It wasn't that Irwin was unhappy. Because he wasn't. He had a good life. He had everything he'd ever wanted. Lost some things along the way - Christ, what he'd lost - that he hadn't bargained on losing. When he was younger, he had always thought of his future in terms of gain rather than loss. When he didn't get into Oxford the first time around, he had consoled himself that at Bristol he would get the brilliant education _and_ the student experience that Oxford lacked, or so he had imagined at the time. Their loss was his gain.

 

He had gained what he had set out to. His own television programme. Two books out, and another in the works (television programme tie-ins, with his controversial theories laid out in a way that his non-historian viewers would understand, glossy photographs and all). The respect and admiration of lots of modern historians - Ronald Hutton himself had actually admitted that there might be something in his new take on Cromwell in Drogheda.

 

But he had lost - what?

 

Friends. He was rarely in contact with his family. He maintained an enigmatic, mysterious personal life, mostly because it didn't exist. He had no lover, but he had never expected that, so perhaps that was not a loss. There had been only a brief period of time when he had thought-

 

Thought what, exactly? No matter, that time was over now.

 

And of course, the greatest loss of all had been that day on Hector's motorbike. His legs, his _legs_; he could walk, just, but it was best to use the wheelchair when he went out. Just in case, the doctor had said, and Irwin had followed the doctor's advice down to the letter. And to think of all else he had lost that day. The job at the school, and Dakin.

 

Oh, _Dakin_.

 

*

 

It was late on a Thursday evening when Scrippsy rang Dakin at work. They exchanged the usual pleasantries, and then:

 

"It's Lockwood."

 

"Oh yeah? Has his missus popped out another adorable sprog?"

 

"Stuart. He's dead."

 

In future, when Dakin remembered that phonecall, he would think not of the dumb pain that jutted through him at the news that an old schoolmate, an old friend, was dead, but of the surprise he felt when, for the first time, Scripps called him `Stuart'. It was a defining moment. Or it would have been, if Dakin was the sort to have defining moments, which he liked to think that he was not.

 

*

 

The funeral was perhaps the first time since school that they had all been in the same room together.

 

Oh, they'd attempted at get-togethers; but at the last moment one of them had often pulled out (Dakin, maybe, over a girl, or Akthar, claiming masses of work, or Scripps himself with a huge deadline that had to be met). So in nine years, the eight of them had not been in the same room as each other.

 

Of course, even now, they were still missing one.

 

Scripps could not take his eyes off the coffin, off the bright flags that were draped over it, because the army honoured its dead, oh yes it did.

_Lockwood's_ in there. Lockwood, who'd farted loudly in assembly for a laugh, who had to wear his trainers to school, who was really good at drawing, who'd been the first one out of them to get hairs on his chest.

 

"Shit," he said aloud, and turned away. He almost walked smack into Crowther, who caught his arm and released it quickly.

 

"All right?" Crowther asked. His flat Northern vowels had smoothed out into something that Scripps did not recognise.

 

"Not entirely," he confessed, and saw Dakin's dark head on the opposite side of the room raise at those words. Dakin and Lockwood had been close, he recalled, a little hazily. Lockwood had not made any demands on Dakin. He had been a simple boy, easy to understand, a little regretful that they all had more money than him but utterly without resentment. Scripps hadn't known him that well, really. He wished that he had. Dakin had realised that with Lockwood nothing would be demanded of him that he was not willing to give, that with him he could just _be_, free of Timms' bawdy jokes, and Scripps' God, and Posner's love.

 

*

 

Irwin had been oddly touched by the news of Lockwood's death, for one who had not been especially close to the boy, and for one who had read hundreds of thick tomes about the military, and written pages upon pages on the deaths of young soldiers. It was probably because he had known Lockwood as a young man who was barely out of boyhood. It was difficult to picture him as a soldier, like the dark-faced young men who had come in full uniform to form a guard of honour. He'd heard that `The Last Post' would be played. It was like a bloody _joke_, and a bad one at that.

 

He had been somewhat nervous about coming to the funeral. It was not as though he had parted on good terms with these young men, and beside that, how much of a right had he to turn up? He'd only known the boy for a term at most - was it right that he mourned him? Was it _possible_ for Irwin truly to mourn him?

 

The funeral was a pitiful sight. Sunbeams were streaming through the high windows of the church, and Lockwood's mother was crying. A brown-haired woman - Irwin presumed, Lockwood's wife, and how odd that was - was sitting with a small child. They spoke of his successes and how everyone who had met Lockwood had thought what a bright, upstanding young man he was. He had been that, Irwin supposed, but he had no time to truly honour him, as his attention had been thoroughly caught and captured by a slim dark-haired man on the other side of the room, whose head was bowed, whose eyes were, as ever, masked.

 

*

 

Lockwood's widow stood near the end of the funeral and made her way up to the front of the church. A piece of white lined paper, the sort that a schoolgirl would use to write giggling notes to her friends on, was clasped in her hands. He was the first of them to marry, and the first to die.

 

When she reached the front of the church, Lockwood's widow cleared her throat and began to read. It was a poem that they recognised at once, Hector's words still ringing true for each boy-now-man.

 

"The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood," she read, and left a too-long pause after the line. Posner wondered briefly if she was trying to pull herself together, and saw her raise a hand to her eyes before starting again.

 

"The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood," she said again. "This Eastertide call into mind the men, now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should have gathered them and will never do again."

 

It was a short poem and Posner could see her legs shaking as she returned to her seat. "I don't know if that poem was apt," he muttered to Akthar, who was beside him. "I don't know if it _fitted_ properly."

 

"Thought that counts, innit?" Akthar said, shrugging very slightly. "She was his wife. It's her choice."

 

Posner nodded. In front of him, the familiar outlines of his old schoolmates' heads were bowed and solemn.

 

*

 

There was a party after the funeral. Scripps had always felt that post-funeral parties were slightly inappropriate, but he went along anyway. Just to pay his respects and so on, and to see his old school friends, too. School had seemed so bloody agonising when he was there but now, thinking back, it really hadn't been that bad at all. But then, wasn't that always the case? Hindsight was such a bastard.

 

"All right, Scrippsy?" Timms had come up behind him, laying a hand on his shoulder.

 

"Not too bad," Scripps said automatically.

 

"So what are you up to these days?" Timms sighed heavily, and dropped down into the chair next to Scripps.

 

"Journalist," Scripps said, and then added automatically, "but one of these days I'll be a novelist."

 

"Ah, right." As Timms turned away, Scripps saw a bit of a smile on his face. Always such a bloody joker, he was. Able to crack a smile at another's valiant lies even during a funeral. Sorry, a funeral _party_. Scripps had to stifle his own smile and thought, for a moment, that perhaps he was going insane.

 

*

 

Dakin was twitching. Not for a fag or a drink, because he had both a Marlboro and a glass of awful red wine, but because funerals tended to make him immensely uncomfortable. He didn't even know why. He didn't like to see people cry. He didn't know what to do, and ended up either staring at them or attempting in vain to make himself stop laughing at them. Comforting them was always out of the question. What did you say when you couldn't identify with someone's problem, and didn't want to, either?

 

He wasn't a crier, himself. Sometimes his eyes got a bit wet, like when his dad had died, but that was just because of extreme emotion. It wasn't a big deal.

 

Dakin sighed and drained his wineglass, trying to suppress a slight grimace at the taste. Then he turned towards the drinks table again.

 

He was not anticipating nearly falling over a wheelchair, and righted himself immediately with a glare at the unfortunate had managed to see it happen. He was tutting and turning to walk away when he looked at Irwin for the first time.

 

Obviously he'd _seen_ him earlier that day, seen him from the side, noted the keen blue eyes and sandy-brown hair, but he hadn't looked at him properly. He'd made an effort not to, all too conscious of one of the last times they'd met-

 

(`Is that a euphemism? Saying a drink when you actually mean something else?')

 

God, he'd been such a cocky little sod. And it had worked. It had _worked_, he thought victoriously, and when he looked at Irwin for the first time he stared him directly in the eye.

 

*

 

The boy's dark gaze was almost unnerving. That was Irwin's first thought, and the second thought was not so much a thought as a shudder of abrupt recollection, of those lips forming the words `sucking me off', of the heat of that body pressed close to his, almost touching but not quite, of how those eyes had resolutely not met his own at Hector's funeral.

 

"Dakin," he said, his voice miraculously steady.

 

"Sir," Dakin returned. His voice was different, somehow. His eyes raked over Irwin, and Irwin felt himself redden. "You can walk," he said, after a horribly awkward moment. His face was still so bloody unreadable. A familiar feeling of wanting to strangle him at the same time as wanting to - well, there was no point in putting it into _words_ \- ran over Irwin.

 

"Sharply observed," Irwin told him with a slightly odd laugh.

 

"I thought you were in a wheelchair."

 

"I was. Ten years of physical therapy later and I can walk for a few minutes," Irwin said flatly, and added something sarcastic so that Dakin could not, "Bully for me, right?"

 

There was no such answering sarcasm in Dakin's face. "Not exactly what I was thinking," he admitted. He cleared his throat and looked away from Irwin. The weight of that gaze gone was as if a heavy chain had been lifted from around Irwin's neck, and he didn't know if he was glad about it or not. It seemed that his eyes had fallen upon the coffin, because he looked back quickly, wrenching his eyes away as if anything was less painful to look at, even Irwin.

 

"Friendly fire, can you believe?" Irwin said quietly, hoping to - something, hoping to achieve some sort of connection, hoping for anything from Dakin, from this odd confident boy who he had missed, strangely.

 

A shadow of several emotions ran over Dakin's face. "Friendly fucking _fire_?" he finally settled for wrenching out. "It doesn't sound very sodding friendly to me!"

 

Irwin reached out and caught onto his arm, holding it blindly and tightly, hoping perhaps in vain to leech some of that anger and desperation into his own body, and hold it safe, until Dakin was ready and able and willing to take it back again. The boy - the man - closed his eyes for a moment and took a shudderingly deep breath and Irwin said in a low voice, "There. There you go."

 

Dakin opened his eyes again and there was something in them, something damaged and still so angry, that simply made Irwin hold onto him more tightly.

 

*

 

When Mrs Lintott looked over at Dakin's sudden explosion, she felt something in her chest sink.

_It's beginning again_, she thought, a little wildly, and upon meeting Posner's eyes, the palpable pain in them reassured her that yes, she was right, it _was_ beginning again, but equally that there were destructive relationships and loves in this world far greater than the lamentable ballad of Irwin and Dakin.

 

*

 

In his taxi on the way home, there was a small piece of paper that had Irwin's phone number written on it burning a hole in Dakin's shirt pocket. It was just over his heart, and he didn't appreciate the symbolism of that, although he was sure that Hector would have had a field day.

_The first of us is gone. _

 

It was an unsettling thought. Lockwood was under ground now, inside a wooden shiny box with feet of soil heaped on top of him. He'd never liked small spaces, either. Jesus.

 

He felt slightly sick, and rolled down the window a couple of centimetres to get a bit of fresh air. Outside the sky was black and spots of rain were splattering onto him through the open window, just tiny pinpricks, nothing to worry about.

 

With tentative fingers he plucked the phone number from his pocket. He held it to the open window for a moment between his thumb and index finger, the end of it flapping in the wind. It would be so easy to simply let go and move on, like he always did. It was safer. It was always safer to move on.

 

After a moment he drew it back in and placed it carefully back into his pocket. The ink was slightly smudged with drops of rain. Perhaps safety was overrated.

 

*

 

"Was he staring at me?"

 

"Yes," Scripps admitted and then frowned slightly, adjusting the phone to hold it between head and shoulder while he reached out to flip through a file. "Wait, who are we talking about here?"

 

"Posner, you idiot!" Dakin hissed down the phone with a flurry of static.

 

"Oh yeah. Yeah, he was staring."

 

"Shit."

 

"He's nothing to worry about now," Scripps said lightly. "Don't worry. He probably just fancies you, is all. And you're not into blokes, are you?"

 

"Depends on the bloke. I mean, I have-" Dakin broke off. He sighed loudly, with yet more static. Scripps could almost imagine his eyebrows knitting together in that familiar grimace. "I have - you know. _Been_ with blokes," he admitted, after a moment, laying the words down carefully, as though they were difficult to say and came from a place within him that was very tender.

 

"Really?" Scripps said with more than a hint of interest. "But at school you seemed so-"

 

"Straight. Yeah, I know. But there was-"

 

They both broke off for a moment, as if Irwin's name was not to be uttered, as if it could not be heard.

 

"Well." Dakin coughed, as if to cover up what he'd just said. "I'd better be off-"

 

"Did you like him?" Scripps asked abruptly, suddenly desperate to know, to understand.

 

Dakin paused, every crackle on the bad line full of expectation. "I suppose I did," he said after a moment, reflectively, and Scripps sensed that he was getting something from him, something honest, something without the usual innuendos and teasing that Dakin usually employed. It was a sort of defence mechanism, Scripps supposed, to stop people getting too close to him, to the truth. "He was clever," Dakin continued. "And interesting. He was..." He sighed. "Unlike everyone else."

 

"And he liked _you_."

 

"Ah, that was the thing. I didn't know that at the time, it was only after it all that I realised that he liked me just as much as I liked him. I don't like people who like me back, as a general rule. They're boring. I just sort of - make people like me. It's easily done."

 

The words were full of ego, but that was Dakin all over, and Scripps had never taken offence to anything he said. It was true; people did like him, and if they didn't it was easy to _make_ them like him. All it required was a flash of invitation in those dark eyes and people came flocking like idiotic sheep to the slaughter.

 

"You self-centred wanker," he complained good-naturedly. "So... are you what? Gay?"

 

"I've got a girlfriend!"

 

"Just asking. Bisexual?" Scripps rolled the last word almost teasingly.

 

A pause, and then a barking, honest laugh. "I don't know what the fuck I am, Scrippsy. Does it matter? Do you care?"

 

And Scripps thought carefully about it, and decided that no, he didn't care, and it didn't matter, because Dakin was an enigma, apparently even to himself, and it was probably safest to leave well alone.

 

*

 

Dakin's girlfriend was called Jessica. She was of about average height, with a narrow waist, large breasts, and a cascade of chestnut-brown curls of which she was very proud. She was all right, Dakin supposed. Nothing special, not really. She wasn't too bad to talk to, and she was excellent in bed, which was the main reason he was still with her after two months. He supposed that in a way that made him a right bastard, but he didn't care all that much; certainly not enough to break up with her, anyway.

 

They'd just got to the stage where staying in with takeaway pizza and rubbish TV and sleepy sex was acceptable, so that was what they were doing on the evening of the day after Lockwood's funeral. Jessica was curled against his chest, her hair up his nose - he kept trying to snort it out - and sighing contentedly every few minutes.

 

"How was the funeral yesterday?" she asked during an ad break. "Was it horrible?"

 

"Not horrible," Dakin said, after a moment. "Not exactly."

 

"Oh." She shifted slightly, her shoulder pressing into his armpit. "Was it lovely to catch up with all your old friends?"

 

"Not too bad," Dakin said casually, combing a hand through her hair. She let out an almost purr, curling closer to him and stretching out one perfectly waxed leg luxuriously. Her toe accidentally hit the remote control, and the channel flipped; of course, because fate was fate and Dakin had perpetually bad luck, it was a history programme, presented by a horribly familiar man with brilliant blue eyes and a painfully expressive mouth. Dakin felt his stomach flip, although did not know quite why.

 

"He used to teach me," he said vaguely to Jessica, and she said, "Hmm?", not quite listening, which was probably for the best.

 

*

 

Irwin was there first.

 

Of course, he made a point of getting to places at least five minutes early, just in case of unforeseen obstacles, so it wasn't a surprise that he arrived before Dakin. He still couldn't quite believe that Dakin had phoned him, if he was honest with himself. He still couldn't believe that there was a chance he might actually turn up.

 

His eyes were fixed on the window, where you could see people arriving and leaving the pub. He'd chosen a table next to the door - easy wheelchair access and all, even though he hated that he'd been forced to bring the chair - so he could see all the arrivals easily. As he watched, a familiar figure turned the corner towards the pub, faltered, turned away again, body paused and straining; then, after a moment when Irwin's heart was in his mouth, stomach almost hurting with nerves, Dakin walked in.

 

Their eyes met and Dakin's lips curved slightly, and Irwin thought for some reason, in an odd loving sort of way, _You're here now. And I've got you._

 

*

 

The first thing that happened was that Dakin offered him a drink and Irwin declined, because he was driving, and Dakin accidentally shot a look at Irwin's legs that asked `How can you drive if you can't use your legs properly?'

 

Irwin rolled his eyes and said, "Long story," as if he couldn't be arsed to explain rather than what Dakin was sure was the truth, that he could not tolerate the awkwardness that would inevitably be caused by any discussion of that sort.

 

Dakin excused himself, and went over to the bar. It was a nice pub in Camden, small, white fairy lights strung around the picture frames on the walls; he ordered a pint of Guinness, which seemed to fit in with the general atmosphere. He paid, exchanging a bit of a smile with the barmaid, and then pushed his way back through to the space next to the door, to Irwin.

 

He set the glass down on the table in front of him and sat down, pulling his stool closer to the table. He stared into his glass, and after a moment looked up. "This is weird," he said flatly.

 

"Tell me about it," Irwin agreed. The tone of his voice, immediate and on the wrong side of desperation, made Dakin smile, and when he met Irwin's eyes properly things seemed slightly better.

 

*

 

"You went out with him?" Scripps asked. Even to him his voice sounded flat and vaguely disbelieving, so he could only imagine what it sounded like down the phone line to Dakin.

 

Dakin sighed, sounding annoyed. He was good at making noises express emotion. "_Yes_. Why the bloody hell not?"

 

As Scripps opened his mouth to tell him exactly why the bloody hell not, Dakin continued to talk.

 

"It was just a drink, Scrippsy. And I don't see why I shouldn't, because life's only so long, isn't it? And you know I don't believe in all that God bollocks, so this is it. This is it. If I don't do this then I'll kick myself for being such a bloody prat. And I'll be sitting there when I'm eighty thinking `Oh shit, I should have gone for that drink.'" He took a deep breath, sounding raspy and strained and all sorts of things that there were simply no words for.

 

"He was our _teacher_," Scripps said heavily, and Dakin said, sounding surprisingly like he was eighteen again, "So fucking what?"

 

"So fucking nothing," Scripps answered, and decided it would probably be prudent to change the subject. "So my editor has finally decided that my poetry corner idea thing is-"

 

"Girly?"

 

"_No_-"

 

"Poofy?"

 

"Coming from you, mate..."

 

"Oh, shut up!"

 

"A good idea, is what it is. A bloody fantastic idea," Scripps said triumphantly. "It'll be brilliant. I'm doing some easy stuff to start off with, y'know, your basic sonnets and ballads."

 

"Boring."

 

"Not always," Scripps argued, feeling defensive for some reason. "I reckon that Shakespeare's sonnets are some of the best dep-"

 

"Are you going to say `depictions of love'?" Dakin asked. "Because if you are, I may as well just confiscate your testicles right now."

 

"Fuck _off_! No. Depictions of life. Of being human."

 

There was a pause, and then Scripps could hear Dakin shake his head. "No. They're all about all that lost love bollocks. _Longing_."

 

"Yeah. Like I said," Scripps continued calmly. "Being human."

 

*

 

"So, I earn shitloads of money," Dakin said lazily. He was only halfway down his pint but his voice was already slightly slurred, and Irwin wondered for a moment if he'd been drinking before he arrived there.

 

"So I've heard," he said carefully. "You've got a good job."

 

Dakin nodded, trailing a finger around the top of his glass. "Thanks. Yeah, I have. Hector'd... I dunno what he'd think of me. I don't reckon he'd like it. But _you_ think it's a good job, right?"

 

"Of course it is," Irwin assured him again. "Why do you say that about Hector?"

 

Dakin shrugged, and then sat up properly in his chair. "I'm right, though," he said, avoiding the question as skilfully as ever. He'd done that in school; he hadn't ever answered an essay question definitively. He'd always left his options open. He was that sort of person. "He wouldn't like it. But he's dead, right, so fuck him."

 

"Fuck him," Irwin agreed, lips twisted in a half-smile, amused in an odd dry sort of way.

 

Dakin nodded. "You know, I've got a girlfriend," he said, after a brief pause. He looked up from his coffee and caught Irwin's eye for a beautiful moment, a brilliant smile hovering around his lips before falling away. "I didn't tell her that I was going out with you tonight," he confessed, then. "I don't know what that means."

 

"It doesn't have to _mean_ anything," Irwin said, somehow able to get his words out around the lump in his throat.

 

"Everything means _something_," Dakin argued. He took a breath, looked away from Irwin for a moment, and he was staring hard out of the window as he said, "I think I might break up with her."

 

"Whatever makes you happy," Irwin told him, and meant it.

 

*

 

When Mrs Lintott passed the pub, she was on her way to the post office. She was sending a parcel of tea, Jaffa cakes, and proper chocolate (Galaxy) to her daughter, who lived in Canada. She had become a lesbian after the collapse of her marriage. It really was lucky that Frances was so open-minded, otherwise there might have been an upset.

 

It was a big coincidence when she looked into the pub and saw Dakin and Irwin there together. For a moment her eyes made contact with Dakin's; there was no chance of Irwin seeing her, of course, not when his eyes were so securely fastened onto Dakin's face. Dakin's face was blank for a moment before he regained his composure and gave her a cocky salute. She waved her hand regally in response, and smiled at him.

 

Even as she was walking away she knew that Irwin had still not bothered to look towards her. And who would bother to look at an old woman? Certainly not he whose future was sitting in front of him.

 

*

 

The next time Dakin met Irwin, he had broken up with Jessica, and felt as though he could breathe again. Every time he broke up with someone he always told himself afterwards that women simply were not worth it.

 

Men, on the other hand-

 

He'd wondered about that. Sexuality was something that he had not thought about properly; he acted on his impulses, and had a lot of sex, but he had never really thought about it in any details, had never contemplated why he did what he did. Not that there was anything to contemplate. Everyone was bisexual, he told himself. What he felt for the man sitting opposite him was normal, average. It wasn't as if he _minded_ the fact that he fancied other blokes on occasion. It was just the associations that went with that, those awful associations. Dakin was nowhere near a mincing fairy boy, and neither was Irwin.

 

Posner, on the other hand, fitted the stereotype perfectly, but that was not the point.

 

He met Irwin's eyes, gave him a hesitant smile, and looked away again. Men were different. That was all there was to it. Not different enough to stop him from doing anything, but different enough to matter.

 

*

 

Posner had always had a problem with moving on.

 

He'd dropped out of Cambridge because the memories of sixth form had been too much for him. He'd had jobs since then. He'd left those jobs because the memories of dropping out of Cambridge had overwhelmed him.

 

Basically, his life was a big cycle of attempting to start over again, and failing miserably at it.

 

His mum said that all he had to do was meet a nice boy and then he'd be fine. Posner doubted that. (He hadn't come out to her, incidentally; she'd _guessed_, and of all the humiliating conversations he'd had in his life, that had to come out top.) He couldn't see himself getting on with some bloke for the rest of his life.

 

But he had nothing going on in his life, presently. An embarrassing amount of nothing, in fact. He did have a job, to be fair; he was a history teacher, and even now he was sitting at the desk at the front of H1 and trying to keep his mind off the tall dark sixth former who he had a lesson with just after lunch.

 

He had come to realise, after the funeral, that Dakin had been an odd sort of fixation. Someone to blame his utter lack of a life on until he had one - `Oh, I'm still hung up on this bloke' - and Dakin didn't deserve that. No one deserved that, not even that self-centred cocky bastard.

 

Still, a new teaching assistant was arriving that afternoon. Apparently he was male and twenty-something and a bit gay-seeming, according to the school secretary. Maybe Posner could attempt to move on with him.

 

There was always hope, after all. Maybe he was stupid and naïve, but no one could deny him that.

 

*

 

"So you've done well for yourself," Dakin said conversationally.

 

Irwin raised his eyebrows, faintly surprised. They had been discussing Antonia Fraser's latest tome and only _vaguely_ come to the conclusion that it was too populist, so this change in conversation was, if not strange, at least slightly odd. "Thank you," he said cautiously, and wished that he had at least some idea of what on earth was going on in Dakin's head.

 

"Are you happy?" Dakin asked, and then said, "Actually, don't answer that. No one is, are they, really?"

 

So different from the way he'd been before, all arrogance and defiance and protests, that yes, he was the best, he lived his life in the way he had always wanted to.

 

"I'm happy in my way, yes," he answered.

 

"Satisfied?" Dakin caught his eyes for a moment, looked into them, held tight.

 

"Almost," he half murmured, and Dakin's lips twisted in a smile.

 

"Anyway," Dakin continued. "I've got to go. I've got _work_." He raised his eyebrows meaningfully and Irwin half-laughed. Dakin stood, and edged his way out of their booth. Their offices weren't far away from each other, and they'd taken to meeting at lunch, just for a chat. It was becoming less awkward now, and they were more able to truly talk about things that actually mattered to both of them.

 

"All right." Irwin reached for his walking canes and levered himself, slightly painfully, out of the booth. It was getting cold, and his legs always hurt in wintertime. He tried not to demonstrate how much he was leaning on his sticks, but Dakin could tell, he was sure. Irwin could see it in his eyes.

 

"Would you like my newspaper? There's a good article about a new book on Mussolini. Apparently," Dakin said airily, as if to disguise the fact that he'd noticed Irwin's reliance on his walking sticks, "he was not a nice bloke. Unique view." He enunciated the last two words in that clear, sardonic way he had.

 

"Unique meaning `crackers'?" Irwin asked, feeling himself smile wryly.

 

"Unique meaning the least unique thing I've ever heard of." Dakin smiled slightly, and reached over, the newspaper in one hand. He pushed it into the crook of Irwin's arm. "Here. Take the paper."

 

Irwin nodded, and Dakin grinned at him before leaving. It was the newspaper that Scripps worked at; after sinking back into the booth he mindlessly flipped pages before a large red mark caught his eye. He frowned slightly, pushing his glasses up his nose as he gazed at it. It was one of the poems in the section that Dakin had told him about, that Scripps had worked tirelessly for. It was one of the shortest poems he had ever read:

_`The Lover Writes A One-Word Poem:_

You!'

 

It was outlined with a large, sloppily drawn red circle, as if Dakin had been reading the paper at his desk, seen the poem, and circled it recklessly, on a whim.

 

*

 

Late that night, Dakin was awoken by the phone ringing. He knew before he picked it up that it was Irwin. It had to be. It was inevitable.

 

"Hello, sir," he said silkily, when he'd picked up the phone.

 

"Oh, shut _up_," said the irate voice on the other end of the line. "Shut up, Stuart, don't call me that. This is getting ridiculous."

 

Dakin's stomach turned, in a not entirely pleasurable way. "Well, yes," he agreed. "But hasn't it always been? If you think about it, I mean."

 

"I've done nothing but think about it," Irwin hissed at him. "I've spent hours thinking about, my whole evening, you stupid bloody boy!"

 

"That all I am to you? A boy?" Dakin asked, and added on the end, a sly "Sir?"

 

"Oh, _stop_. What did you mean by giving me that poem?" Dakin could hear the strain in Irwin's voice and he hurt at it, he did, but not enough to tone himself down.

 

"What do you think I meant?" he asked, instead, voice full of teasing.

 

"I've no bloody idea," Irwin said flatly. "What _did_ you mean?"

 

"I don't know," Dakin confessed, and the silence stretched out between them.

 

Then he made a decision, abruptly, and all the hair on his body prickled with fear and excitement and an odd sense of joy as he said, "This time round there'll be no euphemisms, you hear me?"

 

"What?"

 

"No _euphemisms_. None of that `let's go for a drink' bollocks I pulled on you last time." Dakin took a deep breath, and checked himself for nerves, for the tiniest hint that he didn't want to do this, but could find nothing. "I want you," he said, after a pause, "to fuck me."

 

He could practically _hear_ Irwin's erection as the other man inhaled suddenly. "You - you do that?" Irwin asked, his voice oddly deep. Aroused, Dakin realised suddenly.

 

"I do anything," he murmured, and then half-laughed at himself. "Maybe it was the euphemism that was the problem last time. Or the diary. That _bloody_ diary. Do you still have one?"

 

"Yes," Irwin confessed. "But only for work."

 

"And God," Dakin said fervently, wishing Irwin was there so he could look at him and hold him in his gaze and never let him go, "this isn't work. So your planner can stay in your pocket."

 

"I rather think it can," Irwin said, and he sounded overwhelmed and terrified and _right_.

 

*

 

It had been awkward for about twenty minutes when Irwin broke off and said, "Is this because of Lockwood?"

 

Dakin raised a dark brow at him. "Is _what_ because of Lockwood?" he asked.

 

"This - everything. You being here." Irwin gestured wildly at his living room. Dakin looked oddly at home in a place where Irwin had expected him to be all wrong, where he had not expected Dakin to fit.

 

Dakin exhaled wearily. "No, you daft prat. It's because you rang me at two o'clock last night and asked me why I pointed out love poetry in the paper to you."

 

Irwin laughed. He couldn't help himself. "Oh, for God's sake," he said, feeling oddly buoyant, as if he was being swept along by the tidal force that was Dakin. "You know what I mean."

 

Dakin's face softened, at least as much that Dakin's face _could_ soften. "Yeah, I do. I'm not here because of any stupid life is too short shit. I'm here because I want to be."

 

"Righto," Irwin said, and bit his tongue moments later. Right-bloody-o? What was he talking about?

 

Dakin looked as though he was hiding a smile, and then said, unexpectedly, "Let's go upstairs."

 

On the way up he laughed at Irwin for having a stairlift, and didn't really seem to care, not enough to leave, anyway, which was a Dakin sort of thing to do. Leaving was how he resolved things, by simply _not_ resolving them.

 

When they got upstairs Irwin took him by the hand and led him into his bedroom, and there was an awkward moment when Dakin's hand brushed over Irwin's hip, oddly intimately, and then they both stopped and stared at each other, just inches away, beautiful painful inches.

 

"It's all right," Dakin breathed then. "It makes sense. It does. You don't have to be afraid of _me_. This. Whatever."

 

"I'm not," Irwin said, and had no idea whether or not he was lying, which was odd for one so accomplished at it.

 

Dakin laughed, an easy exhalation, and pulled Irwin down to the bed. He took off Irwin's glasses, unhooking them almost tenderly from behind his ears, and placed them safely out of the way. He exhaled shakily, breath warm on Irwin's lips. There was an odd look in his eye, one that Irwin did not recognise, but that was nothing new. He had long since learnt to simply go with it.

 

Then Dakin reached out and, with his fingertips, touched gently Irwin's cheekbone, his jaw, the lines around his eyes and mouth, as if he was exploring somewhere new, a place that he had wanted to go to for a long time, a place that was finally becoming familiar to him.


End file.
